Most urban counties in the region took advantage of a 1990s law allowing $2 fees for the filing of deeds, liens and other property records and created Real Estate Fraud Prosecution Trust Funds to hold the cash generated by the fee. Orange County leaders, however, refused to do so, calling the $2 fee a tax.

Now comes this new law, signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on July 21, upping the maximum fine for posing as a real estate agent to $20,000 and allowing local prosecutors to keep any of the fine money levied over the old maximum of $10,000. The catch? The county must have a Real Estate Fraud Prosecution Trust Fund to keep any of the fine money.

So wouldn't it be worthwhile to create the fraud prosecution trust fund, even without the fee, so the county could keep part of the fine money?

The answer from the Orange County CEO and District Attorney offices: No.

J.D. Power and Associates reported that home sellers gave their highest ratings to the Prudential real estate chain, while the top ratings for home buyers went to Keller Williams. It was the consumer survey firm's first report on national real estate chains.

Home sellers were asked to rate brokerages based on their agent, his or her marketing efforts, office and services. Buyers rated brokerages based on the agent and his or her office and services.

Those selling homes gave Prudential a score of 793 out of 1,000 points, according to the survey. Coldwell Banker and RE/MAX tied for a close second with scores of 792.

Buyers gave Keller Williams a score of 831 out of 1,000, according to the survey. Prudential was the second-highest rated chain among buyers, with a score of 820, followed by Coldwell Banker in third place, with a score of 816.

Sixty-eight percent of the buyers surveyed said they used the Internet to help them buy a home, while 61% of sellers used the Web.

Orange County is unable to take advantage of a new law that lets counties keep a portion of the fines levied against people caught working as real estate agents without a license because it's one of the few metropolitan counties in the state to resist setting up special fraud prosecution units and trust funds.

The new law, signed Monday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is designed to beef up weak enforcement of real estate license laws. Currently, the state Department of Real Estate can only issue desist and refrain orders to unlicensed agents, orders that are often ignored, state officials said. And prosecutors usually failed to act when such orders were ignored.

“These low-profile license violations were often overlooked unless there was substantial financial loss,” explained state Sen. Jack Scott, author of the new law, which will take effect on Jan. 1.

The measure increases maximum fines from $10,000 to $20,000 for individuals and from $50,000 to $60,000 for corporations. It also allows counties to keep any amount over $10,000 levied against individual perpetrators and any amount over $50,000 levied against unlicensed corporations..

But there's a catch. To keep the excess amount, the county first must have established a Real Estate Fraud Prosecution Trust Fund, something that O.C. officials have consistently refused to do for at least 12 years.

Steve Rodgers took over late last year as CEO of Prudential California Realty, overseeing more than 90 offices from San Diego to San Luis Obispo area, including 21 in Orange County. The company is owned by Home Services of America, a division of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. We asked him recently how Prudential California is weathering the housing slowdown and his view of the market in O.C.

Us: How has the slowdown in home sales affected Prudential California's O.C. operations?

Rodgers: The slowdown in the real estate market has caused us to look at all company expenses, streamline our budgets. We have streamlined some of our sales staff. There has been a natural attrition; some Realtors are committed to real estate as their sole profession and have stuck. Other agents have expressed interest in, and have moved on to, other endeavors.

We have consolidated some offices in Orange County and all Southern California, where there was redundancy -- two or more offices handling similar locations. The slowdown has also caused us to change our training programs. We have actually beefed these up to help new agents learn the skills needed to communicate in this kind of market and to help seasoned agents polish their skills.

Also, we have added new divisions -- REO, banking, auction -- to further help our customers and be the real estate resource for them. In the end, we are just working on making smart business decisions: getting smarter about our expenses, and trying to drive revenue in different ways than we were doing before. We are also trying to educate our agents -- and buyers and sellers -- about the market through internal and external communications.